And to accompany the previous blog: No recipe is complete without a picture of the chef. This is Melinda DeBruyn, our Office Manager, and resident Fang Freak. Yummy soup, Melly.
Archive for the ‘Staff & Culture’ Category
The Witches Brewer
Posted in Staff & Culture
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The Witches Brew
Posted in Staff & Culture with the tags halloween
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Enjoy this excerpt from a classic Halloween scene (illustrated by Mel’s homemade brew).
It’s kinda like making soap…but without the body parts.
Round about the caldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone, Days and nights has thirty-one; Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou firs i’the charmed pot!
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of frog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
The Witches Spell, Act IV, Scene I. MacBeth (1606) by William Shakespeare.
Happy Halloween from the Rocky crew!
The Rocky Team takes Banff Ekiden
Posted in Staff & Culture
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For all the runners out there who like to keep up on the circuit…Rocky had a rockin’ team participating in the Banff Ekiden relay this past weekend. It’s a marathon done in relay form between 5 team members.
Jules (our CEO), Lois (our Accounting Wizard), Kimiyo and Jane (both from Shipping), and Richard (Lois’s hubby…and his pulled calf) rallied to come in 20th out of 32 corporate teams. 55 overall out of 91 teams. Pretty awesome for our little team of soap slingers! It was a beautiful 5+C day, and our smiling team had a great time huckin it through the mountains. They may even do it all again next year!
Financial Wizard Wanted
Posted in Staff & Culture, Talk To Us with the tags financial controller, help wanted, hiring
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We’re looking for a Controller to lead our Finance and Admin team. They’re a wonderful group of gals so you need to be an excellent manager to ensure they’re well looked after. Oh, and you need to be qualified at the finance stuff too, ideally with a professional qualification and/or relevant experience.
Along with the usual financial control responsibilities some of the other big things you’ll be doing are:
Financial analysis of new retail store opportunities
Product costing analysis and pricing recommendations
Development of business metrics and integration/implementations of business systems
If you have fantastic finance skills and you’re an awesome person who’d be a great addition to the Rocky management team then zap a cover letter explaining why the job should be yours along with your resume to jules@rockymountainsoap.com.
We’re Looking for a Calgary Manager!
Posted in Staff & Culture, Talk To Us with the tags calgary store, calgary store manager positon, hiring, position available
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As you know (cause we only blogged about it half a dozen times) we opened our redesigned Calgary store in December. Well now we’re looking for a customer service dynamo to fill the roll of Calgary Manager and we’re excepting applications right now.
We’re growing fast and we’re on a journey to be Canada’s leading 100% natural bath & body company. If you’re passionate about natural and believe that natural matters because your skin absorbs what you put on it, you’re excited by the prospect of joining a fast-paced Canadian company with a warm and quirky corporate culture, and you enjoy providing amazing customer service and building local business relationships, please send your resume and cover letter to jane@rockymountainsoap.com.
Best of luck and don’t hesitate to pass this along to anyone you think might be interested!
No More Plastic Bags!
Posted in News Flash!, Staff & Culture with the tags plastic bags, reusable bags
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We have a Green Team here at Rocky. OK, we used to have a Green Team of about 6 
people, which has somehow become a team of one. Andrea Bauer, Southgate Centre Assistant Manager by day, renegade zealot for the earth and recycler extrordinaire by night now embodies our Green Team. Though I’d like to think we’re all some shade of green here at the Soap Co (definitely feeling a little chartreuse coming on after I overate date squares at the potluck today) since we make a biodegradable product, use cornstarch peanuts in our shipping (which aren’t bad with a little salt), and use Bullfrog Power (wind energy).
Andrea’s Green Mail, which she sends to us every month contained some very interesting facts:
Leaf Rapids, Manitoba has become the FIRST Canadian town to take the leap and ban plastic bags and enforce a $1000 fine to retailers who don’t comply.
China, South Africa and the cities of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mumbai have outright banned plastic bags. In South Africa retailers caught handing out the bags face a $13,800 fine or 10yr jail sentence! A hefty tax in Ireland has caused a drop in usage of 95%.
I’m happy to say we now have our reusable bags available in store. They are cute, pink, work great as a lunch bag, and can double as a tea cosy in a pinch. Don’t forget your reusable bags when you’re out and about, but make sure you wash them when they need it, otherwise you’ll have an unwelcome grow op in your trunk.
Our Civic Duty
Posted in News Flash!, Staff & Culture with the tags anti-doping, olympics 2010
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We wracked our collective brains to come up with a message in Whistler that would get people excited about our brand. It’s hard to compete with an event founded in 776 BCE by the son of Zeus. So if you can’t beat em’, join em’.
Therefore, I had to share the poster that is currently living in our Whistler windows until the end of the Olympics. We thought we were going to be in big trouble when the anti-doping agency came by. Turned out they just wanted a copy for their offices!
Being Nicely Unexpected, is so…nicely unexpected.
Posted in Staff & Culture, Talk To Us with the tags Bookmarks, Edmonton, nicely unexpected, NURPS, Southgate Centre
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Most people spend their weekends, sleeping, reading, watching movies, eating, or obliterated. Kimmie, in shipping, took it upon herself to make bookmarks and pencil holders from the leftover Christmas box walls and bases. Each bookmark has a colour coordinated ribbon, which she lovingly ironed and tied to perfection. This is the same woman who took our new reusable bag and sewed a fabric insert, complete with cell phone pocket inside it. Gad zooks!
Andrea Bauer, our Assistant Manager in Southgate Centre (Edmonton) took it upon herself to research and write an internal ‘Green Newsletter’ with tips on things you can do at home to lighten your footprint. I’ll share some of them in blogs to come.
Sachiko, from our Admin team, sewed curtains for the windows in the garage doors in our Production bays because the light was shining in the eyes of our Production team.
I think there is something in the air here besides the smell of lavender and grapefruit. The workshop and our stores are full of people who continually go above and beyond, and being our resident blogger – I think I’m entitled to brag about them.
These nicely unexpected actions occur so frequently that we invented NURP’s. Which stands for Nicely Unexpected Rewards Program. Every quarter we submit nominations and the NURP’s team votes on the winner.
If you – as a customer – experience Nicely Unexpected treatment from one of our staff members at any of our stores – please don’t hesitate to write to me about it at blog@rockymountainsoap.com. I’ll be happy to nominate them on your behalf.
Is it any wonder I love what I do?
You’ve Got to Make Your Own Fun
Posted in Healthy Living, Staff & Culture with the tags january run, january walk, rocky mountain
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Once when I was left to entertain myself (and I was 8, that’s important to know) I decided to step on a banana peel to see if they really were slippery like all the cartoons said they were. So in the name of research I ate the banana and put the peel gooey side down on the floor and walked on it. I don’t remember what happened after that. But, in much the same spirit, our darling Jane Green is creating her own fun…
Jane is the inspiration for our RMS Women’s Run. She couldn’t walk to mailbox without huffing and puffing, and then she joined our running club, lost about 70lbs and became a fire-cracker of a runner. Jane’s goal for 2010 is to run a race per month.
Off to a bit of a rough start – apparently there aren’t any races in January in our area so Jane decided to host her own race and invite friends and family to join – that means you! If you’re in the area (we’re in Canmore, AB) and fancy a sprightly run or walk on Sunday morning, please join us!
Jane’s January Fun Run and Walk
Date: Sunday, January 31, 2010
Time: 11:00a.m.
Place: 103-95 Dyrgas Gate (click here for map)
RSVP to: 403.609.4633. or mjanegreen@hotmail.com.
Food and drinks served afterward at Jane’s house. Please bring your own mug for hot cider, and feel free to bring snacks to share but it’s not necessary. I’ll bring the bananas.
A Screaming Good Time
Posted in Staff & Culture with the tags norquay, skiing, snowboarding, tubing, winter celebration
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Last friday the Rocky team shut down the workshop and the Managers came from far and wide to join in a day of skiing, snowboarding, tubing and good eats. Every Christmas we are so busy and overwhelmed with the demands of the season that the last thing on our minds is a party. So we decided to celebrate our successes and the end of a past year and start of the new with a Winter Celebration in January. Friday the 15th found us at Norquay enjoying buckets of falling snow. Sometimes we were on it, sometimes we were under it, but oh it was joyous. It couldn’t have felt more festive if it was December 25th.
The first half of the day we went skiing and snowboarding (ok, I ‘shredded the gnar’, the rest of the team went skiing. I flew off into the trees, the rest of the team stayed on the run like normal people). Then we had beer accompanied by soup and sandwiches (not to be confused with sandwiches and soup accompanied by beer) and headed to the tubing park to see who would be the most successful at keeping it all down. Much to the chagrin of the tubing boys whose sole purpose in life is to ‘spin you right round like a record, baby’, we all managed to keep said snacks where they belonged.
I had to share this video of our much loved Edmonton manager – Joveena. I don’t think anyone loved the tubing experience as much as she did, and a better set of lungs you never met. This video was about the dozenth time she’d been down the hill. Some things never get old.
